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Your Stocks Are Fine -- You're the Problem

Most individual investors dramatically underperform the broader market. Here's an easy way to save yourself from a similar fate.

If there's one thing we've learned over the last few decades, it's that humans are hardwired to be horrible investors. Are there exceptions? Of course. But the vast majority of us fall, the general rule applies: Greed causes us to buy when stocks are high, and fear induces us to sell when stocks are low.

In the video below, Motley Fool contributor John Maxfield outlines how investors can circumvent these emotional weaknesses by using two broad-market, exchange-traded funds: the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index(NYSEMKT:VTI), which tracks virtually the entire universe of U.S. stocks, and the SPDR S&P 500(NYSEMKT:SPY), which tracks the S&P 500(SNPINDEX:^GSPC).